In areas where flooding is a frequent occurrence, both temporary or permanent barriers such as levees created from bags filled with sand have been found to be effective in containing flood waters. Barriers created by using sandbags are also used in other situations such as environmental spills and drainage control. However, it is to be appreciated that in creating such a barrier, a large number of sandbags are typically needed in a short span of time.
Typically, sandbags are manually filled at the site by volunteers. This is a time consuming and backbreaking endeavor. When manually filling sandbags, each bag must be held open while sand is poured in by the shovelful. When filled, the sandbags are either hand carried to the barrier or are lifted into a transport mechanism such as a wheelbarrow or truck bed.
In an attempt to simplify this manual procedure, various sandbag filling devices have been proposed in the art. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,564,886; 5,829,949; 5,873,396; 5,894,871; 5,947,347 and 4,184,522 all disclose various attachments for filling one or more sandbags by way of an auger or gravity feed. However, these examples are expensive and inefficient solutions to the problem. Furthermore, they fail to address the issue of transporting and placing sandbags at the barrier.
There is a need then for a device that can fill multiple sandbags simultaneously and preferably place them in the desired location. The device should be able to perform equally well with wet or dry filler material. Furthermore, the device should be simple in design for greater reliability in that failure may result in unacceptable property damage. Therefore, there is a need for a reliable, efficient and low cost sandbag filling machine.